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Energy
Climate Change Progress Is Possible
POLITICO
John Podesta
President Obama will continue to push forward to protect our public health by curbing carbon pollution, to protect our communities from climate impacts by building resilience, and to lead the international conversation by making progress at home. Taking action on climate change today is our best hope for ensuring our children a prosperous future. Those in Congress who question the need and efficacy of the President’s actions on climate change will find themselves on the wrong side of science, on the wrong side of history—and on the wrong side of the American people, as bipartisan majorities strongly favor controlling carbon pollution.
Rand Paul’s Risky Bet on Climate Change
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Clare Foran
The Kentucky senator and would-be 2016 contender has bucked the GOP establishment on an array of issues ranging from national security to drug policy. And in recent months, Paul has started to build a record suggesting that he supports action to cut air pollution and believes that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change.
TransCanada Plans to Seek U.S. Approval for New Pipeline Project
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Amy Harder and Alison Sider
The company behind the Keystone XL pipeline plans to ask the U.S. government to permit a new and different pipeline project. Despite the yearslong fight over Keystone XL, TransCanada Corp. will apply to the U.S. State Department to build a 200-mile pipeline from North Dakota’s booming oil fields across the border into Canada to connect to another proposed pipeline, according to a person briefed on the plan.
Mr. Obama’s Easy Call on Keystone Bill
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Not building a pipeline means that more oil — and more carbon dioxide — will be left in the ground. That is the main reason to say no. Another is that, at least right now, this country does not need the oil. Improved technology, chiefly hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, has opened up vast new deposits of not only natural gas but crude oil; in January 2014, Mr. Obama was able to announce that for the first time in decades the United States was producing more oil than it imported, and the Energy Information Administration has forecast that reliance on overseas oil will continue to fall.
Technology
Obama Heads to Security Talks Amid Tensions
NEW YORK TIMES
David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth
President Obama will meet here on Friday with the nation’s top technologists on a host of cybersecurity issues and the threats posed by increasingly sophisticated hackers. But nowhere on the agenda is the real issue for the chief executives and tech company officials who will gather on the Stanford campus: the deepening estrangement between Silicon Valley and the government.
Internet groups in tricky position over US net neutrality
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Richard Waters
This is where things could become dicey for companies such as Google and Facebook. Who knows how some future FCC would interpret its new Title II powers, or whether a court would order a different implementation of the law. Price regulation of the internet’s interconnection agreements would always be a looming threat.
Who’s going to sue the FCC over net neutrality? Probably the cable lobby.
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
A top lobbyist for the cable industry is signaling that his organization will probably sue the government over its proposed net neutrality rules when the time comes. Although board members at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association haven’t resolved to sue, it’s “highly likely” the trade group would join a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission, said NCTA president and chief executive Michael Powell.
Forget Net Neutrality, Focus on Fiber
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Andy Kessler
It is time to adopt a Quick Dig doctrine. This is the Google Fiber approach: Google only agrees to lay fiber in cities that agree to easy access to infrastructure and a quick permitting process. Though Google has agreed to expand in 34 cities in nine metro areas, it looks like only Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham will see fiber installed. Google is still haggling with the other locales over details. But Google can’t do it alone. The FCC can encourage the rollout by mandating that municipalities open up their infrastructure to all who wish to install fiber—instead of using access to extort money from would-be providers. New companies would show up to lay fiber. Wall Street would funnel capital to those with the best prospects.
Finance
GOP: Banks pressured to donate to liberal groups
THE HILL
Kevin Cirilli
Justice Department officials reached multibillion-dollar settlements with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citibank between November 2013 and August 2014 for the banks’ roles in the lead-up to the financial crisis. As part of the settlement terms, DOJ officials required the banks to donate millions of dollars to housing and activist groups, which Republicans say have gone unfairly to left-leaning groups like the National Council of La Raza.
Warren: Community banks thriving under Dodd-Frank
THE HILL
Kevin Cirilli
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) maintained Thursday that the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law has helped community banks do better than big banks. Warren made the claim at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on community banking regulations, during which she also chided Daniel Blanton, chairman-elect of the American Bankers Association (ABA), who testified.
Larry vs. Marco
NEW YORK TIMES
David Brooks
The biggest philosophical difference between Rubio and Summers is this: Rubio sees government as a bridge helping people to get into the marketplace, while the Summers document argues that the marketplace is structurally flawed throughout and that government has to be a partner all the way along.
Money Makes Crazy
NEW YORK TIMES
Paul Krugman
Monetary policy probably won’t be a major issue in the 2016 campaign, but it should be. It is, after all, extremely important, and the Republican base and many leading politicians have strong views about the Federal Reserve and its conduct. And the eventual presidential nominee will surely have to endorse the party line. So it matters that the emerging G.O.P. consensus on money is crazy — full-on conspiracy-theory crazy.
The Looming Trade Showdown
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Kimberley A. Strassel
Mostly, the Washington grown-ups need to make clear to the public that those griping about the president or currencies aren’t making trade points. They are making trade excuses. And not even very clever ones.
Politics
The war on Jeb Bush
POLITICO
Alex Isenstadt
For most of the past year, the Republican 2016 nomination fight had been seen as a free-for-all among a half-dozen or so viable candidates with no clear favorite. But in a matter of weeks it’s morphed into a collection of would-be Bush rivals and detractors ganging up on the early front-runner in hopes of blunting his momentum.
GOP Contender Walker Draws Wall Street Cash
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Rebecca Ballhaus and Heather Haddon
Wall Street is warming up to Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Several GOP fundraisers from the financial-services industry and other Manhattan business sectors are hosting donor events for Mr. Walker, a likely presidential candidate, when he visits New York next week. The events show that while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have strong support in New York money circles, neither has a lock on the city’s big-dollar donors.
Dems pick Philadelphia for 2016 convention
POLITICO
Mike Allen and Kyle Cheney
Philadelphia has been chosen as the host city of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, party officials announced Thursday. The decision is a huge disappointment for New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio had made a major effort to land the convention for Brooklyn. … The convention will be held in the Wells Fargo Center, home of the Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers. The same building, then called the First Union Center, hosted the GOP convention in 2000.
Senate frozen amid DHS fight
POLITICO
Burgess Everett
The stubborn impasse on Homeland Security funding has sapped the chamber’s ability to do much else for the past two weeks, aside from some small-bore legislation. And as lawmakers skip town for a 10-day recess, some Republicans worry that the fight could drag on far past the Feb. 27 shutdown deadline — particularly if Congress ends up passing a short-term funding Band-Aid that merely sets up another cliff.
Congress Shows a Lack of Enthusiasm for Giving Obama War Powers to Fight ISIS
NEW YORK TIMES
Peter Baker and Ashley Parker
Ever since President Obama ordered American warplanes to begin bombing terrorist targets in Iraq and Syria last year, members of Congress have insisted on having a say in the matter. The president, they declared, could not, or at least should not, take the country back to war without the input of the nation’s elected representatives. Now, six months after he sent the military back into combat to take on the terror group calling itself the Islamic State, Mr. Obama has acquiesced and sent a measure to Congress asking it to formally authorize what he has been doing all along. And now that they have gotten what they asked for, few in Congress seem all that enthusiastic about the prospect.
Obama puts down in writing his troubling worldview
WASHINGTON POST
James Jeffrey
The Obama administration sent to Congress last week its second report on national security strategy. These updates are mainly a dry inventory of our aspirations, what’s happening in the world and what the United States can do in response, rather than a true strategy. That was the case for this one as well, but bits of it reveal much about how President Obama views the world. Combined with his recent interview by Fareed Zakaria on CNN, his State of the Union address last month and his speech last May at West Point, we can glean a good summary of the president’s basic principles for security policy. Unfortunately, that summary is troubling.
Senate Gives Approval for Defense Secretary, if Not His Boss’s Policies
NEW YORK TIMES
Emmarie Huetteman
Republicans were cautious to draw a distinction between supporting Mr. Carter and supporting Mr. Obama, especially as many lawmakers expressed reservations about the parameters of the authorization regarding the use of ground troops and its place with an existing authorization for military action. … Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called Mr. Carter “one of America’s most experienced defense professionals.” But he said he did not think Mr. Obama would put his full faith in Mr. Carter.
